


A Swing and a Miss

by Colourless_Green_Ideas



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Baseball, Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, Clint Barton is Smart, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Everyone Is Gay, Learning Disabilities, Pansexual Character, Service Dogs, Tony Stark Has A Heart, all the ages are fucked up, it makes it a whole lot easier on me if they're all around the peak age for a baseball career, so there's not a lot of room to work with, which is generally 18-30ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7899205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourless_Green_Ideas/pseuds/Colourless_Green_Ideas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint had always loved baseball, but he wasn't dumb. He knew, as a gay deaf practically illiterate 22 year old, he wasn't the top pick for a bench warmer, let alone a pitcher. He gave up that dream a long time ago.<br/>But when Clint is drafted to a team on the verge of falling apart, will he be the glue that holds it together, or will he let himself be seduced by rival Loki Odinson and be the thing that finally tears them apart?<br/>Inspired by the Sherlock fanfic- The Bang and the Clatter by earlgreytea68</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Call to Adventure

It had been a hard day, and nothing but the soothing rhythm of the batting cage could calm him down. Two tests he didn’t know about because of his crappy interpreter, plus another paper due in a week that he couldn’t pass without perfect grammar. It was too different, English grammar. ASL had that flow, a fluidity of understanding that English couldn’t match. A single sign, a picture painted in the air, could easily encompass what took English an entire paragraph to describe. He wasn’t even qualified for the English all the foreign kids took, ESL, because sign “doesn’t count as a first language, since it isn’t a language at all.” Stupid administrators, making his life a living hell.

He was just falling back into the groove of the swing when a he felt a presence behind him. They were probably saying something, but with the helmet over his good ear and the whir of the pitching machines and the clang of the metal fences, Clint couldn’t hear anything if he tried, so he didn’t bother. They wanted his time, they could wait for him.

He only had three more balls left, so he tore out all the stops, swinging the bat with all of his considerable force to smack the ball hard at the far nets, watching for half a second as the ball swung back out onto the green painted floor. After his time was up, he tore off the helmet and shook out his sweaty hair, reveling in the feel of the breeze running through his soaked scalp. He stretched his shoulders out languidly as he strolled over to the bench that held his things, making sure to get out all the knots from being hunched over for so long. Tomorrow was his ASL 1040 course, and with the amount of signing that took place, every sore muscle was a burden.

The shadowy presence – a Suit, of all people, with the mirrored sunglasses and everything – followed him to the bench, jaw yapping the entire way. Clint ignored him in favour of running through his backpack for a towel and his hearing aids. He found them both quickly where he stashed them in the front pocket and went about his routine, drying off his hair, then swiping around the outside of his ears with the towel, then a wet wipe, only interrupted a few times by Lucky insistently pawing at his legs to tell him the man was talking. Only after that would he put his aids back in, otherwise they’d get clogged up with wax and sweat and shed skin, and he really couldn’t afford any new ones.

Once his aids were in and clicked on, he heard a suspicious silence beside him where the suit stood. Clint frowned up at him. “Were you saying something?”

The suit gulped and tensed his hands quickly before relaxing them. “Did you not hear a word I’ve said in the last ten minutes?”

Clint could only shrug. It really wasn’t his fault the guy assumed he could hear him. Blame it on living in a Hearing world, he supposed.

The suit sighed and ran a gloved hand over his face. “Right.” He said, taking off his glasses with his free hand to reveal the bluest eyes Clint had ever seen. “Long story short, I’m here to recruit you for the Avengers.”

Clint frowned. The only Avengers he knew was the New York major league baseball team and they only recruited from their minor farm system, never from community colleges in Queens. “Why’re you here?” He asked lamely, running a hand over Lucky’s head to calm him down. He could tell that he was slurring and he wasn’t sure those words even made sense together, but it was the best he could do without his crappy friend-of-a-friend interpreter.

Thankfully, the dude seemed to understand. “I know the r[oo]s, and that Major League teams are only [ow]ed to re[oot] from the Minors, but there is also a [loss?] that states that a Major League team can re[oot] a player from outside the Minors if they are at[ending] a community college on an [laundry?] [aided] sports scholar[tip], and are over 18 years old. You, being just 20 and here on an [march] [airy] scholarship, are perfectly [koala] [fried].”

Clint didn’t quite know what to say. Sure, he knew there were more loopholes in baseball than actual rules – Barney made sure to teach him that – but he didn’t think anyone actually used them. “You want me?” He asked, eyebrows automatically furrowing as he pointed to his own chest.

The suit nodded. He grabbed a packet out of who knows where – Clint’s best guess was either a special pocket in his suit or up his ass, either was plausible – and handed it to Clint. “Here’s [hour] [Jenna] [rule] contract for incoming players. Read it over. My number is on the back if you have any questions, [rick] [west]s or [concert]s.”

Clint looked down at the paper. It was at least ten sheets thick and written in tiny print. He stared hard at the words, willing some sort of meaning out of them, but all he got was that there were a lot of numbers and dollar signs. That and a raging headache. He looked up to see if the suit could help him make sense of any of it, but he was nowhere in sight. He looked down to Lucky, but the dog seemed just as confused as he was.

Sighing, Clint picked up his phone and opened up his text messaging app. He knew who he needed to talk to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so a couple things:  
> I will post a quick primer on non-spoilery things at the top of each chapter, concerning baseball stuff or anything that's not expected to be general knowledge, spoilery things(only spoilers for the chapter the notes are for) at the bottom. That being said, I have both types for you now bc I didn't want to clog up the beginning.
> 
> Concerning Clint's hearing: He's hard of hearing, technically, but since he signs and is in contact with the Deaf community, he prefers the easier-to-understand term: deaf. He can hear some things clearly (train horns, alarms, thunder/lightning, basically anything super loud or super high/low pitched) and others he needs hearing aids to hear at all (conversation-level voices, knocks on a door, phone ringtones, dogs barking, someone shouting from far away, etc.) and even with his aids he needs to be able to see someone's lips move to understand what they're saying, and even then he's crap at lip reading so he probably needs a full time interpreter but he's stubborn (and poor) enough to refuse unless it's actually necessary (such as at a job, classes, etc.)
> 
> I will be using the same type of spoken word/perceived sound substitution used in the Fraction line of Hawkeye comics, where Clint - being deaf - will hear sounds and see words mouthed, but won't necessarily connect those words to the correct intended meaning or context as quickly as he hears them. In other words, he can't hear for crap so he's crap at understanding what people are saying, and since he's facilitating the perspective for all (most?) of the story, neither can you, the reader.
> 
> Concerning the conversation with Coulson: basically when Clint was "ignoring" him, he was making the usual pitch (hah, puns) about work environment, salary, promotional sales, realistic playing time for a regular season, etc. Afterwards, he condensed it and ran bc he was caught off guard and he hates that (he thought Clint was playing Hard to get). The rule he was explaining was one that states a player can be drafted straight from college if said player is over 18 and attending a community college full time on an unrelated sports scholarship. It's not used very often, but it does come in handy in Clint's situation (he's on an archery scholarship, if you couldn't guess). The Avengers are in a precarious situation rn, as you'll see, and therefore are sort of grabbing at straws to try and make things work and not have to give up their shiny new startup bc of a few unruly characters.
> 
> Now that that's out of the way, this chapter is shorter than the other two(ish) I have written, as sort of a quick intro. My updating schedule will (hopefully) be relatively quick, maybe a chapter once a week, maybe longer. I won't post a chapter until I have the next written, just in case I need to switch a few details around to make things go more smoothly.
> 
> Ok that's it. Look out for the next update sometime in the next week(things need to die down a bit around here, first week back at school is stressful and extra time consuming).


	2. New Friends, Old Flames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more info dump! yay!  
> so Lucky in this universe is a hearing service dog, kind of like a seeing dog but not really. He responds to noises in the immediate area and alerts his master in different ways to indicate different types of noises. If someone seems to be talking to Clint or says his name, Lucky tries to alert Clint by physically getting his attention, then indicating the direction the noise came from(this also comes with some false alarms, like people with bluetooth and police, generally). For loud noises, since Clint can kind of hear them, he rushes to the source of the noise. For honking or cars, Lucky will bar Clint from crossing a street, or getting too close to a curb. I...think that's it.

“The deaf and the blind banding together over baseball. The DPI would give us a standing ovation.”

Matt just rolled his (useless) eyes at the lame joke and continued to listen to his computer as it read out the document, making shorthand notes as he went. Clint, ever the impatient client, grabbed the baseball left out by the other partner – Foddy or Foggy, either was equally ridiculous – and threw it in the air a few times, testing his reaction time by picking out a point in space and trying to catch the ball as close to that point as possible. Lucky went wild around his legs, jumping up to try and steal the ball out of the air.

“Well,” Matt said after a few minutes of diligent note-taking, “As far as I can tell, everything [chats?] out. Keep in mind, I know next to nothing about sports, for [avi]ous reasons, but nothing looks out of [space?].”

Clint grinned and leaned over, giving Matt a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, babe.” He stole the pad of paper with the notes on it and started looking it over. Matt, intimately familiar with Clint’s troubles with English in general, laid it all out in words he could understand. They were giving him a pretty sweet deal, almost $15 million over six seasons. “How much is that per season?”

“About 2.5.” 

“Wait, so I get a guaranteed $2 million for the next six years?” Clint couldn’t quite believe it. Sure, he was pretty accurate and he had some good tricks up his sleeve, but he was a bona fide middle school drop out who just barely made it into community college because of his short service career. He never thought he’d make more than $20,000 a year, let alone $5 million.

“Plus food money.” Matt said. Clint tried his best to hide the way his heart sang. “But you only get the money if they play you a [sure]tain number of innings as a closer. Really, as long as you don’t get injured or start giving away hits, you’re in the clear.”

Clint, forgetting common courtesy for a moment, grabbed Matt by the shoulders and gave him a hard kiss on the mouth. “You’re the best, babe.”

Matt quirked a smile at the same time he clenched his hand on his briefcase. “You don’t really get to call me that anymore. This isn’t some summer [thing?] anymore, we’re both real life adults with real jobs.”

“I know.” Clint smiled still. “But you can’t tell me I didn’t give killer blowjobs back in the day, like two years ago.”

“Yeah, but then you left.” Matt said so low that Clint couldn’t hear, having to rely on lip-reading. Matt’s disposition suddenly became cheery, sincerely enough that Clint had to question whether he read that last bit wrong. “I’m really happy for you, Clint. I hope you do well.”

“Thanks, Matty.” He said, giving him his signature goofy grin. “I damn well hope so too.”

\--

“Hey Barnes!” Clint called out as soon as he walked in the door. The lights flickered in the bedroom at the same time Lucky raced towards the door.

He shucked his coat and threw his stuff down on the kitchen counter before heading over to his brother’s bedroom. Barney, apparently, was doing some new weird stretching regimen for his legs. Probably Simone’s fault.

“I need you to make a call. Trust me, it’s real important.”

Barney sighed and sat up straight, smacking his hands down on his legs. _O-K what’s-up?_ He signed deftly.

_Baseball –job –recruitER –need –answer_

Barney frowned. _RecruitER –need –answer –about –what?_

Clint grinned as wide as his mouth would let him and shoved the contract he had rolled up in his back pocket towards Barney. _New-York A-V-E-N-G-E-R-S –need –pitchER_

Barney took the papers slowly, looking them over even though Clint knew he couldn’t really read words that big.

_Brief –notes –MATTY –give-me. You –need -you?_

Holding out a hand, Barney nodded. He went back to looking over the papers, dumbstruck. _This –big –numbers._

_I-know_ Clint grinned as he handed over the papers. _I –famous –now._

Barney rolled his eyes, then continued reading the notes. After a few moments he nodded, mouthing “Wow.” _They –serious –want –deaf –gay –not-graduate –college –pitchER?_

Clint shrugged. _They –give-me –offer. Now –their –problem._ Barney gave him a dubious look. _Now –you-call-them –you?_ Clint asked getting impatient. He really didn’t need his brother telling him how much of a miracle this deal was.

 _Yes –yes –I-call –recruitER. Number –you –have –you?_ Barney sighed, taking out his cell phone.

Grinning, Clint handed over the business card the Suit had given him. _Phil Coulson_ , it read, _NY Avengers Liaison._ Barney looked surprised, but made no comment, choosing instead to start dialing.

Clint, already bored, clicked off his aids and flopped down on the bed, letting a hand fall over the edge for Lucky to lick. He wanted to go out, maybe get a celebratory pizza or something, but he had to stay close in case Barney needed anything.

Barney, it turned out, had it all handled. Next thing Clint knew he was being shoved off the bed and signed at insistently. _You –have –Spring –train –over-at-FL –three-weeks-forward._

_I –meet –team –three-weeks-forward?_

_Yes_ Barney signed, rolling his shoulders. _Now –you-leave –I –stretch._

Clint gave him a lazy salute and left the room, making his way upstairs to the loft where his own bedroom was. He changed quickly, exchanging his stiff, sweat soaked t-shirt and gym shorts for a tank with I WATCH BASEBALL FOR THE BOOTY printed on it and a pair of tight running pants. It felt strangely appropriate for the day he signed for a major league deal. At least it was partially accurate, while he loved the game itself, he couldn’t deny those Major League boys had great asses.

He grabbed Lucky’s buddy leash and whistled to call him over. The dog immediately showed up at the top of the stairs, ears perked and ready to go. Clint smiled -Lucky’s excitement was always infectious- and connected one end of the leash to his collar and the other to his own waist.

 _Ready?_ Clint signed, getting a bark in response. _We –go._

He jogged down the stairs, calling out to his brother that he was leaving. He didn’t wait for a response –he knew Barney heard him- just grabbed a water bottle and stuffed it in the pouch on the leash’s belt on his way out. They took the stair down all four flights, emerging outside to the bite of the late winter air. It was still January, but it was just on the right side of freezing that Clint didn’t have to worry about either him or Lucky getting sick as long as they kept moving.

They were almost halfway through their run, about four miles from home, when Lucky suddenly stopped and started barking. Clint, out of breath, crouched down and signed at the dog. _Whats-up?_

Lucky barked again and pulled him backwards, not stopping until they reached a man in a dark suit and overcoat and some sort of weird triangular goatee.

Clint pasted on his best polite grin. “Yeah?”

The man said something Clint didn’t catch, what with the wind and the facial hair, while pointing at his shirt. Clint chuckled a little. “Yeah, it’s a pretty great shirt, right?”

Frowning the man pointed to himself while talking, gesturing wide with his hands towards some spot over the river. Clint sighed and got out the tiny notepad he kept in the leash pocket just for this reason. “I’m deaf,” he said as he handed the pad to the man. “Could you write that down, please?”

The man frowned even more deeply, then took the notepad. He hunched over the paper, writing intently for a few minutes while Clint waited and petted Lucky’s head absently. Finally, after what seemed like ages, the man handed the pad back. He’d taken two full pages.

Clint sighed and started reading.

_Wow, okay, so first thing’s first, I guess. Your tank kicks ass, and I stopped you because I wanted to make a joke about my own baseball booty but you couldn’t hear it so it’s just kind of awkward now. I’m on the NY Avengers, that new little crop up that took over for the Yankees, so watch out for this booty in the spring training games in a month or so. By the way, do you not have hearing aids? A cochlear implant? I know they don’t always work or whatever but I also know that they give you some residual sound at least, if you want them. If you can’t afford them just let me know, I’ll have SI’s latest model shipped to your house or apt or whatever asap. Also, idk why we’re doing this on paper when I could just as easily have my phone interpret my voice and write it out on the screen so you can read it and text back or talk back or whatever._

“Uhhh” Clint raised a brow at the man. He really knew how to run his mouth, even when he wasn’t talking. “I guess I’ll address these in order then?” He looked down at the paper to see what the man said first. “Right, okay. So you’re in the Majors? That’s cool. I just signed on this morning, so I guess I’ll see you at practice in three weeks, right? Uh, I’ve got hearing aids but they make this weird whistling noise when I run, plus I’ve got Lucky to help me out. And next is…your phone? Yeah, I think that’ll work.” Clint smiled to himself, glad he could actually wade through the wall of text.

The man rolled his eyes and took out his phone, tapping it a few times before giving it to Clint to hold.

“Dude? Not the best idea, really. I can run faster than you can in a suit and this is New York. I could just take this if I wanted to.”

He started running off at the mouth again and Clint just looked down at the phone. _Yeah I know you could steal it but seeing as my dad makes them for a living I can get a new one no problem._

Clint lagged behind the guy’s motor mouth a bit but he got the jist. This guy made phones for a living, SI phones at that. Clint remembered from the news a year or so back that the leader of SI -some two-bit kid named Tony- gave everybody the shits when he trashed the weapons deals and went to play baseball right after.

As much as people looked down on him for his intelligence, Clint was smart. He could put two and two together. “So you’re Tony?” Clint grinned and offered a hand to shake. “I’m Clint, your new closer.”

Tony raised an eyebrow, but took his hand anyway. _I knew we needed a new one after ward defected,_ the phone screen read, _but I didn’t think they would pick up a deaf teenager._

Clint pouted and crossed his arms. “I’m 22.”

 _Well at least that’s older than me I suppose._ Clint tilted his head. This kid was younger than him? He seemed so much older, with his confidence and highly styled goatee. Now that he looked closer, though, Clint could see how he wasn’t balanced quite right, still in that awkward post-growth spurt age where everything is suddenly shorter than it used to be. His eyes were bright, despite his body looking a little too skinny for his height, and he used shoulder pads to disguise how he hadn’t quite filled his frame with muscle. Clint would guess he was around 19, possibly just 20.

 _Well,_ the screen updated as Tony shifted a little uncomfortably, _I need to get a move on. You can keep the phone if you want, free of charge._

Clint was about to protest that he couldn’t just keep it, but by the time he looked up Tony was gone. “Not again.” He whined to no one in particular.

Lucky, sensing his distress, nosed at his knee, prodding him to get back on with the running. Clint himself felt a chill run down his back and decided Lucky was right, he had to keep moving if he wanted to stay warm. He started jogging back to his apartment, letting any thoughts of rambling teen business moguls drop from his mind. He could deal with it when the time came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick thing  
> I know that a phone call doesn't just make all the paperwork and negotiations disappear, they will happen, just not on screen. Matty knows what he's doing, and he'll bother Clint to make sure he takes it seriously and actually tries to haggle on certain things. The ending salary ends up being about $17 mil over 6 seasons as long as he plays a minimum of 100 innings per season (usually this would be lower bc closers only play an average of one inning per game but spoilers) plus $100.50 for food for every game played by the team. Overall, not a bad deal. He could have, if he knew much about baseball salaries, haggled up to almost $30 mil over the 6 seasons bc closers are hot shit and get paid almost as much as a starting pitcher, but he didn't, and neither did Matt, so he lost out on $13 mil. Whoops.


	4. Update

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, not an actual update

Hey, guys, long time no see...

So I know I started this almost two years ago and any of you who started following along from the beginning have probably given up all hope of me ever finishing this story. For long time I did abandon it, letting it decay somewhere in the back of my mind as I started college and life graced me with hosts of new challenges to overcome. A lot has happened since I last updated anything on this site - I started college proper, I've become vice president of my university's GSA, I've written and published poems and fiction and even a few research papers and literary analyses, I've changed my name (twice) and come out just as many times, and right now I'm getting started on my grad school applications for an early admission program. Basically, I've taken quite a few major steps forward from where I was when I started this as newly graduate high school student with a hobby for writing and far off dreams of a degree in some form of education. I've evolved and so has my writing, and looking back now on my notes for this piece and for the drafts of chapters I have piled up lets me see exactly how much I've grown in these two years.

But as for this fic, which is what you all actually care about, I am going to finish it. Whether I do that now, this summer, or once I'm in grad school or beyond, I do plan to at the very least make it to twenty chapters, then re-evaluate. Grad school for me means lots of creative writing and fiction workshops, so having a full story that I write and plan all the way through will be good practice and will help remind me where I want to be eventually, beyond flash fiction and poetry and 3 page narratives.

So, long story short, this will continue. I have most of chapter three written already, but seeing as it was written back in October of 2016, I'm going to look it back over and edit it and see where I can go with all this. I still have it all planned out, but all of that is probably going to be edited and changed. Basically, I do plan to continue writing this and updating it whether or not I deem it perfect, and most of that will start happening once the semester is out around May. 

If you've been around since the beginning and have just randomly gotten a message that a fic you don't even remember just updated, thanks for your support then and I look forward t having it again this time around. If you're reading this through because you found a fic that looks enticing and you just recently decided to check it out, then awesome I appreciate you too. If it weren't for people from both of those groups combing through this website and reading and leaving kudos on my work a whole two years later, then I probably wouldn't have remembered this even existed. Just goes to show that even something as small as hitting a little heart button can bring more good content out there in the universe.

I'm going to stop rambling now so you can get back to your lives, but I just want to re-iterate: I fully plan on finishing this fic whether it takes all summer or even another two years or more, and I would like to thank all of you that encouraged me to do so by commenting or adding kudos to any of my existing works on here. Look out for good things this May, I'll see you all then!

-CT


End file.
